Billionaire Brian Sheth pays $15.5 million for the house next door

As the rich get ever-richer, so too do their luxury properties grow larger. Buying the next-door neighbor’s house is all the rage in the Platinum Triangle. After all, seems like everyone’s got a big mansion these days. To really stand out from the herd, you need a compound.

The latest person to get in on the compound-building action is private equity guru Brian Sheth. Longtime readers may (or may not) recall that Mr. Sheth paid $38,270,000 about 2.5 years ago for a dramatic spec-house high in the Trousdale Estatessection of Beverly Hills.

Built by mega-mansion specialist Nile Niami and designed by acclaimed architect Paul McClean, the place is blinged out with an indoor “auto gallery” and 14,000-square-feet of living space spread across a main level and a full-floor basement. There are oodles of terrazzo and marble surfaces stuffed into the home.

Mr. Sheth’s $38 million home

At the time we wrote about Mr. Sheth’s new house, we commented on the fact that his $38 million pad had no front yard at all. A billionaire with no front yard, that’s just unseemly! So it’s hardly shocking that Mr. Sheth has now opted to purchase the house directly in front of his. Frankly, the only surprise is that it took him 2.5 years to make this acquisition.

Brian & Adria Sheth

43-year-old Mr. Sheth comes from a multi-cultural background — his father is an immigrant from India, his mother an American-born Caucasian — and has long resided in the trendy town of Austin, Texas. He and wifey Adria have two children and are prominent philanthropists through their Sangreal Foundation.

In case y’all didn’t know, Mr. Sheth is a billionaire (Forbes says he’s worth $2 billion, to be precise) through Vista Equity Partners, which he founded with his friend/business partner, Malibu resident Robert Smith. Vista now owns over 50 software companies and has over 65,000 employees worldwide.

Mr. Sheth’s $15.5 million acquisition

Anyway, back to the real estate. Since the neighbor’s property was never publicly listed for sale, Yolanda unfortunately does not have any photographs to share with y’all. But we do know that the ho-hum structure (of ambiguous architectural style) was constructed in 1976 and last transferred back in 1997 for — ready for this? — a paltry $1,150,000 in a probate sale.

Our boy Mr. Sheth just paid a complicated $15,555,500 for the house, which means the sellers — a non-famous couple — saw their property appreciate by 13.5x in 21 years. Yolanda is no math expert, but we’d wager that buying this place is the best investment Mr. and Mrs. Non-famous ever made in their lives. Good for them.

And while we don’t know what interior alterations the sellers made to the property over 21 years of ownership, the home’s exterior appears much the same today as it did in 1997. It doesn’t appear that Mr. & Mrs. Non-famous even changed the paint color!

Anyway, the structure has 8,025-square-feet of living space, quite large for Trousdale. There’s a double-height entryway, 4 bedrooms, 5 bathrooms, and a rectangular pool all on more than a half-acre of land.

The $54 million Sheth compound

Naturally we have no idea what Mr. Sheth’s intends to do with his new “spare” 90210 home, but we could easily see him knocking it down and replacing it with gardens and a grassy front yard for his main home. Or maybe he’ll keep it and use it as lodging for guests, relatives and/or his security team. Until he gives us a ring-ring and actually returns the 135,411 messages we’ve left for him, we’ll have to keep guessing.

Of course — like all proper billionaires — homeboy has many other residences scattered across the USA (and maybe the world, we dunno). His longtime main residence is a Mediterranean-style mansion in Austin, Texas with 7 beds and 8 baths in 8,678-square-feet of living space.

Mr. Sheth’s main residence: Austin, Texas

He’s also got another compound in Southern California: this one located in the wealthy Rancho Santa Fe neighborhood of San Diego County. Back in 2012, he and the missus paid $9,200,000 for a “contemporary Spanish” casa with nearly 13,000-square-feet of living space set on a massive 7.5 acre parcel.

Okay kids, that’s all the time we got for you today. Yolanda is off to do our holiday shopping. Be good or we’ll send you that box of coal (free shipping on Amazon, FYI).